Another Blockbuster Smash

The Blizzard Guild was a gathering of young mages who had come together after witnessing the insane success of Doom's Hell Slayer.

And unlike other game developers, they were not operating on the level of "Whoa! Let's make a game of our own and sell it!"

They were die-hard fans of Doom's Hell Slayer.

To put it more precisely—

"Multiplayer! That's going to be the core of the gaming industry going forward!"

"Users competing against each other online. Think about it! This won't just end with selling a single game and being done with it."

"This is a business model that can be serviced for the long haul!"

They were people obsessed with competition between users through multiplayer. Driven mad by ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that passion, they had abandoned their day jobs, gathered together, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠thrown themselves into game development—and the result was:

"This is the game we made. Take a look! It has plenty of commercial potential!"

"Servicing a single game for over ten years? With this game system, that's not a stretch at all!"

They had brought along a rather enjoyable real-time strategy simulation game.

It was an extremely well-made game. You gathered resources, developed your base, produced units to organize an army, and won by destroying every one of your opponent's buildings with that army.

The kind of game that reminded me of a certain ethnic pastime that no Korean man could possibly fail to recognize.

The problem, however—

"You did say it was a game where beings like orcs, elves, humans, and dwarves fight each other, didn't you?"

"Yes! That's right! Those are the factions. Look—these are elves, these are humans, and these are dwarves!"

"I can't visually tell any of them apart at all. There are no distinguishing traits per race, either."

"Distinguishing traits... per race?"

"Do the units really need to be visually distinct? From a top-down view, most of them look similar anyway."

—was the fact that I was a man from Korea who had come from playing the masterpiece that could be called the endpoint of this entire strategy simulation genre.

From that perspective, this game still had a great deal that needed polishing.

"Um... Lord Elsie Bwenner? Would you perhaps be interested in signing a contract for this game?"

"We believe it's an exceptionally well-made game, seeing as we built it ourselves."

"Just think of it as a game where users compete against one another. It'll be serviceable even longer than Doom's Hell Slayer. The competition itself becomes the content, you see."

The five core developers of the Blizzard Guild were watching me with slightly anxious expressions. They seemed worried that I might fail to recognize the value of their game.

But it was quite the opposite.

I knew exactly how much this game was going to blow up.

Which made me want to push my luck a little.

"This game hasn't signed any distribution deal with anyone else, right?"

"Not yet."

"Then let's make a deal with us. Though there's one condition. I'd like to acquire an equity stake in the Blizzard Guild and provide you with a major investment. How does that sound?"

Equity acquisition. A massive infusion of capital through it. And with that funding, a sweeping overhaul of the game's convenience and controls, plus the addition of unique traits for each race.

That was what I wanted.

But—

"You want to acquire a game guild made by five weirdos nobody's ever heard of?"

"Yes. I'm planning to invest ten thousand gold coins of the Valrod Empire."

"Ten thousand gold coins?! To those five crackpots we know nothing about?! Elsie! Why not just leave game development to them and stick to the platform business? Why on earth would you take on that kind of risk!"

For the first time, my idea ran headlong into fierce resistance from the tower.

The meeting room.

This was my home turf. The elders of the Black Magic Tower and the Tower Master had always lent an ear to my words, and this was the room where my opinions became the final word.

Yet now, for the first time, the meeting room had turned against me.

"Ten thousand gold coins is far too much! If the game flops, we're left with nothing, aren't we? That money might as well be thrown into the wind!"

"Just do what we're doing with the other games. Other games are already in development and lining up to request distribution from us. Let's run the safe, risk-free business where we take a thirty percent cut. That sits easier with me!"

"Why throw away that much money? I don't care how much we're raking in from ads and game sales—ten thousand gold coins is a big expense even for us. I have no desire to gamble on the possibility of pissing it all away!"

The Tower Master and the elders kept hammering away at me, but I didn't budge either.

"This is a game whose core is competition between users. Please pay attention to its potential for long-term service. It's a major investment right now, yes—but it has every chance of returning far greater revenue than any future investment would."

"For this to succeed, it would need to sell at least as well as Doom's Hell Slayer. You think that's realistic?"

"Other games are already being distributed and serviced by us! And yet not a single one has matched Doom's Hell Slayer."

"This is going too far, Elsie. On top of that, if we directly invest in a game's development, we'll have a fairness problem on our hands. If we're supposed to handle distribution but we're also developing and selling our own games, what do you think other developers will say about us?"

"Measures to address fairness will naturally be put in place. Blizzard will also pay us the thirty percent fee. And we'll publish our search and exposure algorithms to give everyone confidence that we won't be favoring our own games exclusively. We'll also introduce a data firewall concept—one that guarantees we won't hand any other developer's game data over to Blizzard."

"That's not the point! What I'm saying is, why do we have to take on that kind of risk and go through all that headache in the first place! Elsie! There's a chance we just burn the money, and other developers are bound to sneer and accuse us of favoring Blizzard—so why stick our foot in it at all!"

"Because I'm also envisioning a video platform—and a new form of sports broadcasting built on top of that platform!"

At my words, the Tower Master and the elders' faces twisted into expressions of utter incomprehension.

"Why in the world would we— Elsie, I don't understand you at all!"

"Can't we just rest on our laurels for now? A video platform, a new kind of sport or whatever—that's talk for the far-off future. There's no telling whether it'll ever become reality! We don't even know yet whether this game Blizzard made will succeed or fail!"

"A sport? It's a game, for crying out loud! It's just entertainment!"

The elders' and Tower Master's arguments frustrated me, but at the same time, I understood where they were coming from.

The people of the Black Magic Tower were famous throughout the Wirod Dimension for being an extremely stable, extremely boring tower.

The kind that merely activated jump points and teleportation circles when they were needed. A quiet, stable tower of station attendants and railway repairmen—a tower with no change at all.

That was the Black Magic Tower. Given the nature of people who prized stability and hated change, it was only natural they'd dislike such an aggressive investment strategy of mine.

But I knew.

This was the internet.

What I was building was edging closer to a true internet, complete with community features.

And the internet was the polar opposite of a station attendant. The internet is an ecosystem that cannot survive without change and endless adaptation.

I could have explained the future I knew and the nature of the internet, but I chose not to. It struck me that the priority was to let them feel for themselves what kind of fun a game like this held.

"Tower Master. Elders. Esteemed high mages. Why don't you simply try playing the game right now? Once you've tried it, you'll understand what I'm talking about."

At my words, the Tower Master and the elders pulled dour faces. But I wasn't just anyone, after all. In the Black Magic Tower, flatly ignoring what I said was next to impossible.

"Fine. Let's give it a go."

"If it turns out to be no fun, we'll keep opposing this. Understood?"

"Of course."

And so, the Black Magic Tower's internal War Era tournament was held.

"This is a resource. These are workers. You use workers to mine resources, accumulate them, use them to build structures, and those structures produce military units—and you win by destroying all of your opponent's buildings."

The five members of the Blizzard Guild kindly explained the rules to the Tower Master and the elders, along with the basics of the controls.

The elders and the Tower Master started playing with sullen expressions. They produced workers and gathered resources. Built structures with those resources. Produced military units from those structures.

"Is ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this... supposed to be fun? Is this fun?"

"Maybe it's just my age, but I can't make heads or tails of any of it..."

Grumbling voices cropped up from time to time—We're investing ten thousand gold coins in this?

The five Blizzard Guild mages wore anxious looks, but I had complete confidence.

Why?

Because this wasn't a game that ended at gathering resources and producing units. The true value of a real-time strategy game—

"It's just building structures and producing units on repeat, isn't it! What on earth is fun abo—wh-what?!"

—lay in the fact that you were competing against another person.

The elder's workers were being beaten to death by the Tower Master's military units.

The Tower Master's workers had snuck around behind his base and staged the raid.

And in that very moment, the expression of the elder who had been grumbling about how boring it all was changed completely.

"Hey! You sneaky little— Tower Master!"

"The world of competition is a cold, cruel place, Second Elder."

"My—my workers! My resources! No! Who sneaks around the back like that!"

"Sore loser? If it bothers you so much, do the same to me. Second Elder."

The instant competition began, the word "boring" vanished from the room entirely.

The elder and the Tower Master pressed their faces practically into the screens and threw themselves into a frenzy of micromanagement.

The elder recovered his worker losses, amassed his military units, and launched a counterattack straight from the heart. But it was foiled by the Tower Master, who had massed his troops on the high ground, sealed off the entrance, and answered everything with ranged attacks.

And then, once more—

"Again! He's hitting the workers again!"

"I won't give you time to produce any other units, Second Elder."

"You! Eldrad Camion! You sneaky bastard!"

"Go right ahead and curse me out! Every insult just makes me feel better! Haha!"

The elder's workers dwindled away. With his workers gone, resources ran dry; with resources running dry, he could produce no military units.

And the result: the Second Elder was eliminated.

The Tower Master rode the wave of victory. But eventually, the worker-harassment strategy hit its limit.

"Wh-what the hell?! What's with bringing only workers to raid someone right at the start?!"

"Sore loser, Tower Master? Then why don't you do it to me instead?"

"You! Third Elder, you son of a bitch!"

An all-in early rush.

The Tower Master was eliminated.

And at his elimination, the other elders he had been tormenting—who had been watching the whole spectacle—erupted in passionate cheering.

"So obsessed with hunting workers, and now look at you—eliminated! Puhaha!"

"Serves you right, Tower Master!"

"Shut it, you bastards! Shut it!"

After a long while of snickering, raging, and spectating, a winner finally emerged—one of the high mages claimed the tournament championship.

I handed that mage a single gold coin as prize money, then turned to face everyone.

"Do you see now what this game is truly worth? If we polish this game, refine it into something far more sophisticated, and launch it, it won't end as just another game. We'll be able to hold people captive in it for enormous stretches of time. And it can be serviced for years and years."

"Since the competition itself is the content... I suppose it can hardly be otherwise."

"And what if we turn that competition into a sport and broadcast it? What if we broadcast it using that same feature we showed off at the Senate hearing? People will flood to the video platform. Tower Master, elders—what I'm describing isn't a future that arrives tomorrow. But it will arrive one day. And if we fail to claim that future first, we will be left behind."

At my words, the elders and the Tower Master fell silent.

Before long, every one of them nodded.

"Ten thousand gold coins. Go ahead and invest. There's exactly one thing I want you to demand of the Blizzard Guild: make it fun. Make it fun, no matter what!"

"For strategic variety, I'd like a feature added so that areas our units haven't scouted remain hidden from view."

"Why not diversify the resources a bit more? And the races have no distinguishing traits whatsoever—what if we strengthen those? It would also be nice if the graphics were taken up a notch."

Natural feedback began flowing back and forth between the Blizzard Guild, the elders, and the Tower Master.

Blizzard's mages received that feedback with tremendous passion and launched into discussions about the direction of their improvements.

Watching them, I broke into a contented smile.

It was certain.

This game—War Era—was going to succeed.

Half a year after the Black Magic Tower purchased one hundred percent of the Blizzard Guild's equity for ten thousand gold coins, the decision was made to release it under the name War Era 2.

With its multiplayer features reinforced, each race granted unique traits, a fog-of-war system added, map and racial balance carefully tuned, and the graphics dramatically overhauled with all the gold coins we had poured in, the game launched—and it was a colossal hit.

Just how big a hit, you ask?

It began raking in sales beyond anything we had imagined.

The races of the Wirod Dimension beyond humanity were beginning to flock to Soul Net because of this very game.